iTunes phone disappoints

THEY'VE TAKEN so long to launch the Rockr - Motorola's handset with Apple's iTunes compatibility - that it already looks outdated. Curiously Motorola has even given Cingular Wireless one year's exclusivity for the Rockr.

In 12 months time, who else is going to want to sell it, anyway? The craziest thing is that the handset can only support 100 songs on its 512 MB microSD/TransFlash cards. Wasn't the iPod a smash hit precisely because you could download your entire record collection to it?

Other crazy things include its Bluetooth support. Can you manage your iTunes collection via Bluetooth - No? Does it support a Bluetooth wireless stereo headset (as opposed to mono) - No. Instead it has built-in stereo speakers and comes with a wired stereo headset.

It doesn't even appear to support USB 2.0 as far as the INQ can make out. Which would appear to be why Motorola is saying it takes around 30 seconds to download a 4 MB track.

For this, Cingular expects our American cousins to 'churn' to their network; sign a two year contract; and pay $250. Given that Apple has just announced a new range of iPods, it's hardly a tempting offer.

Over here in Blighty the Carphone Warehouse currently has an exclusive deal. You have to join O2 and get it free with the right contract or pay £210 to own it on prepay. After that it will be available from Orange, Virgin Mobile (shame they didn't get to launch it) and BT Mobile.

The bit the INQ really doesn't understand is that the Rockr E1 doesn't appear to support downloading iTunes via the mobile Internet. That doesn't seem to make sense. But then the E1 is a GSM handset not a 3G beastie. Perhaps there's a 3G version in the pipeline for Europe/Asia?µ